The healthiest you, in your 50s and beyond

Featuring content from MediResource Inc.

We can't deny it: time passes, and our bodies change. Our day-to-day health is kind of like the weather. Like sunny days or passing storms, colds come and go. So do sniffles, aches and pains, and pimples and blisters. Our overall health, though, is more like the climate. It's an accumulation of lots of different factors - genetics, chance, and the lifestyle choices we make - and has more impact on our lives in the long run.

Some of the factors that affect our health are out of our control, like our family's medical legacy. If your mother or sister have had breast cancer, you might be more likely to have breast cancer, too. Accidents, injuries, and genetically unforeseen conditions can sideswipe us and set our health off-balance, too.

But we can control the lifestyle choices we make, and these choices certainly do accumulate and either enrich or endanger the quality of health we enjoy through the years of our lives. Decisions you make, like whether to smoke or not, what sort of foods you eat, and how much physical activity you fit into your life, may make or break your health.

Each one of us is a unique specimen, and the aging process will touch us each in different ways. In general, to be the healthiest you at any age, you will need to understand the ways your body may change. You also need to keep up with a few routine preventive health screenings and integrate beneficial habits into your life. Time passes, so make the most of the time you have, no matter what your age.